Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón is easily Iceland's purest gem. I do not exaggerate and I mean that quite literally. It is a vast lake at the tongue of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier flowing out of the Vatnajökull icecap. Before 1900 the glacier had advanced to within 1 km of the ocean. In its steady retreat since the 1930s, now about 6 km from the sea, it formed a vast glacial lake, now the deepest in Iceland. What makes the Jökulsárlón lake so photogenic is the number of icebergs that calve off the glacier. Ancient glacial ice is a luminous blue, as all the air in the ice has been squeezed out of it. These blue gems floating in the lake take years to finally exit the lake and find themselves floating away from shore, though some are beacht on the shoreline and it's simply fascinating, to see and touch ice-age blue ice, and the experience is well, insert word here that you think probably works for you... I don't know. Bored comes to mind. Wow, that's flippant. Sigh. That loss for words.

 

Blue icebergs float out to sea, some are beacht on
shore and continue to melt and shaped by the waves.

Glacial ice

Ljuba Brank/wikicommons

In the distance, Breiðamerkurjökull calves
blue icebergs into Jökulsárlón

Benjamin, you are never at a loss for words.

 

I spent well over an hour taking video of the ocean waves, as I've written before, I always do.  This time I have waves are crashing over boulders of ice blue.  The full sunlight on the ice makes for what?  I don't know. Footage.

Note to self: to visit Breiðárlón lake, as Jón had advised, though maybe it's a bit off the well worn track, hidden up in the mountain, it's a lake off the same glacier, is, as I understand it, marvelously more boring if that's naturally possible. Do not not go your next visit in Iceland.